"It Is Great the Strength of Intelligent and Free Word" How Grossman's Work Can Be Read from a Legal Theory Perspective

• Autores: Natalina Stamile
• Localización: Archiv für Rechts-und Sozialphilosophie, ARSP, ISSN 0001-2343, Vol. 104, Nº 3, 2018, págs. 328-345
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • The present study aims to shed light on the existence of a relationship, not always obvious, yet undeniable, between law and literature. Although for decades law has been portrayed as sterile, free from moral or practical considerations and totally indifferent to each instance coming from the literary world, literature is full of legal implications and dimensions. I will focus on the literary production of Vasily Grossman because he represents a constant reminder of the violations of human rights in the twentieth century, and not only in the Soviet Union. He was one of the first to equate the horrors of the concentration camps to the gulags – Hitler to Stalin – to show that in every form of totalitarianism there is the total negation of man, the attempt to annihilate individual, moral, and legal identity, to which he referred as "the pervasiveness of evil". According to the Russian writer, the only alternative to Absolute Evil (e.g. the persistent violation of human dignity) is striving towards a senseless, illogical, unreasonable metaphysical good. However, the kindness, Grossman notes, ought to save man. He thus begins an excruciating search for "the man inside man". Every decision, every behavior of the characters in his works, reflects an ethical dimension, or rather results in an ethical choice. So, totalitarian regimes, through a war fought by any possible means, end up destroying the freedom of the individual. In this paper I will argue that throughout the literary production of the Russian writer, there are unresolved issues regarding the relationship between right and evil as well as between freedom and good.